Author Notes:
Disclaimer: ATLA is of course not mine. I'm just borrowing
Season 3, Sozin's Comet - The Old Masters
Aang is missing. Zuko, Katara, Sokka, Toph and Suki have just arrived on Appa outside the walls of Ba Sing Se, after having followed Jun there in a quest to find Zuko's Uncle Iroh. Sozin's comet will be arriving soon.
"It's been a long day," Zuko said looking at Ba Sing Se's broken walls as they landed. He felt tired just being here, and he could hear Uncle Iroh's voice in his head: "Prince Zuko, a man needs his rest." But this was the scene of his greatest crime. His worst betrayal. Would Uncle Iroh's voice be the same now? Or had Zuko lost his uncle's trust forever? Zuko cringed thinking about how poorly he'd treated the one person who had loved him unconditionally. "Let's camp and start our search again at dawn," he suggested, feeling the inevitable reunion he needed to have with his uncle creeping up on him like impending doom.
Everyone except Katara climbed down from Appa's saddle. "Shouldn't we get the tents?" she asked, looking down at them. Zuko started to climb up to help her, but Sokka stretched and yawned.
"For just one night? Forget it. The sky is completely clear and it's still warm out here. Let's just sleep on Appa."
Katara looked down and it seemed from her facial expression that she thought Sokka was being irresponsible, but she was apparently too tired to fight him. She shrugged and climbed down with the rest of them. Appa promptly plopped down on his stomach, all six legs spreading around him. Sokka yawned, walked around to Appa's tail and sat down unceremoniously there. Suki followed him, and Appa didn't even move.
"Fine with me if you all want to smell like air bison tomorrow morning," Toph said, catching Sokka's yawn. She crossed her arms together, squared her feet, and quickly bent up a tent of earth in front of Appa. "Good night friends." She disappeared into the tent.
And that left Zuko standing awkwardly with Katara at Appa's side. She eyed him and he wondered if she was thinking the same thing he was: that sleeping arrangements like this were weirdly complicated when people kept saying you were romantically involved. Though technically only Jun and a few playwrights had done that. Still, it made him feel strange about some of the encounters he'd had with Katara.
Not that he'd done anything wrong, he thought, his ex-girlfriend's face flashing uncomfortably through his mind.
Mostly, he hadn't done anything. Katara was the girly girl who took his hand sometimes when he was sad and hugged with both arms and forced him to initiate hugs himself by crying in front of him. They were also learning to fight as partners instead of enemies. He couldn't help the physical interaction in that, right? It was fine. It was completely cool. He was completely cool with it.
Though there had been an awkward moment during a game of hide and explode last week when he'd pulled her close at the waist so they could shelter together behind an ancient wardrobe.
He could still remember the shallow way she'd breathed and how he could feel her diaphragm moving in and out under his hand. It could have been his imagination, but he thought she'd stiffened when he whispered into her ear that their pursuers were gone. In return, he let her go. He wasn't sure what else he should or could have done.
Damn it. The least she could have done is not be so pretty. That would have helped. But she was pretty. Incredibly pretty. Katara was an incredibly pretty girl who could knock him on his ass one minute and glomp him with a hug the next. She was lethal. When he thought about it, he felt almost short of breath.
Not only that, but Katara had only just started treating him like anything other than a mortal enemy. (Well, fair is fair, right? Not too long ago, Katara had been nothing to him but the obnoxious peasant girl who stood between him and the Avatar.) Now they were going to be sleeping side-by-side on a giant bison. What was he supposed to do with all of that? Who was he supposed to put between her and him? Should he pretend like the close sleeping proximity wasn't going to…unsettle…him? Walk around anti-socially to the other side? Choose a paw and leave it to her to figure ou-
"Zuko," she said, interrupting his thoughts - he noticed then that she'd already claimed one of Appa's paws as her bed - "Are you going to sleep standing?"
"Uh, right." He sat down on the paw next to her, speedily deciding that his best option was to pretend like he hadn't been thinking about how awkward this was at all.
She glanced over at him as she settled down on her back, her arms crossed over her chest. "Don't worry," she said. "Appa sleeps hard. Aang does this all the time."
Zuko swallowed, nodded and lay down on his back too, folding his hands over his stomach. "I can't believe how much travel you've done with an air bison as your primary source of transportation," he said, surprising himself as he extended her words into idle conversation.
Katara laughed quietly. "We're frequent fliers," she said, and she patted Appa's paw as she talked. "This guy's been a trooper."
They both looked up at the stars coming out in the sky. Within minutes, Sokka had started snoring. Katara groaned. Zuko rolled his eyes. "Sokka is a master of stealth," he commented, and Katara had to cover her mouth to contain an escaping giggle.
"I was the best field trip, wasn't I?" she asked in a whisper. "Neither of the guys could have pulled off that flawless execution. Aang and Sokka probably both nearly got you killed."
"A few times," he agreed, and she started giggling again. The snoring got loudly erratic and she looked sideways at Zuko, holding her breath and pressing her lips together to hold in the laughter. But when the snores subsided to a normal buzz, she started up again, harder this time. It was contagious, and it was due at least partially to all the stress they were under, and Zuko started laughing too.
She closed her eyes, tucked her chin into her chest and held her hand to her forehead while she tried to calm down. "The prince can laugh!" she said. "All this time, I didn't know!"
"That is not fair!" he said, defending himself. "I have a great sense of humor."
"Uh huh." She was taunting him, but they had been through so much together recently, and he couldn't muster the annoyance he would normally have felt at someone for making fun of him like this.
"You don't know it yet, but my sense of humor is just as snarky as yours," he said, teasing back. They were talking with low voices and he had the strange sensation that he was somehow sharing secrets with her.
"Are you calling my sense of humor snarky?" she whispered, a shrill punch in her voice.
"Yep," Zuko said. "You have an unexpectedly dark side."
"I do not!"
"Uh huh," he said smugly.
Katara huffed lightly. "Oh yeah smart guy?" she said. "Well, you have an unexpectedly good side."
Zuko's heart twisted funny. He turned so he could see her. In the dark, most of her features were hidden, but there was enough light for him to see her eyes as she turned to face him too. She was still teasing, but there was sincerity there under the surface. "I bet we would have been friends if we'd met a lot earlier," he said, the thought slipping out past his tongue before he could think not to say it.
"You mean before you showed up at the South Pole to capture Aang?"
"I mean when I was a kid. Before-"
"Before your scar?" she said carefully.
"Yeah," he said. "I think you would have liked me better then."
"I like you fine now," she said firmly. "And we are friends."
He watched her face. She still seemed sincere. "I guess we are," he said, then he turned again onto his back and so did she, and it seemed for a while that they were both having their own thoughts. Zuko couldn't put a label on it, but there was something about Katara that made him feel good. Maybe it was that she made him laugh.
"Zuko?" Katara asked after a while.
"Yeah Katara?" he said.
She paused. "I'm glad you joined the group."
He smiled a little. "Me too," he said. "Good night Katara." He rolled onto his side away from her, nesting into Appa's soft fur.
"Good night Zuko," she said, and it sounded like she was shifting positions as well.
